


'tis the damn season

by Kiliann



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Die Hard references are made, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, First Kiss, Getting Together, Love Confessions, Minor Allura/Lotor (Voltron), Pining, Public Display of Affection, Work Christmas Party, langst with a happy ending, lotor is a dick, there is actually a lot more Die Hard in here than I'd originally intended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28087224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiliann/pseuds/Kiliann
Summary: “So, yeah—to get you in, I might need to tell the people at the door we’re together. Is that cool with you?”The annual Altech Christmas Party is hosted at the Altea Estate, one of the most high-tech mansions in the world—and Lance has offered to sneak Pidge in to look around. The catch? Employees are only allowed to bring spouses or fiancés, and Pidge will have to play the part to get in the door. Not a problem.(The real question is whether she can stop once they're inside.)
Relationships: Lance/Pidge (Voltron), Lance/Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64





	1. you could call me babe for the weekend

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing fic (and battling writer imposter syndrome) for years, and the first "real" thing I decide to publish is a rarepair in a fandom that hasn't had any new content since 2018? _What am I doing??_ Well, this, apparently.
> 
> Please enjoy this trope-y, festive conglomeration just in time for the holidays. :') _Yippee-ki-yay!_

Pidge was going to _marry_ Lance McClain.

Literally (and very-much-unrealistically)? _Of course not_ , chimed the unwelcome I’m-lonely-at-Christmastime voice in her brain. Hypothetically? _Yep._

“You’d sneak me into the _Altech Christmas Party_? As in, _inside the Altea Estate_?” She was practically crawling across the wobbly (and possibly sticky) table at Blend of Marmora, the coffeehouse she and Lance frequented most Friday afternoons—thankfully, their usual corner spot afforded them enough privacy that no one would pay them any mind.

Lance barked a laugh, throwing his head back for a brief moment in the wholehearted way he always did things. “Dude, Pidge—you’re vibrating! And also— _yeah_ I’m gonna sneak you in there! There’s no one else on Earth who deserves the kind of inspiration you’re gonna find from that place!”

Pidge fought the heat in her cheeks at the—possibly?—praise and lowered herself back into her chair, sans-vibrating. “My bad. I just—the Altea Estate.” She let out a low whistle. “Holy _shit_.”

The Altea Estate, property of the founders of Altech, was home to some of the most cutting-edge technology in the world. Rumors had it that everything inside was automated, devices greeted each guest by name, and tiny robots served refreshments at public functions. Lance had debunked all but the last point after attending the previous year’s Christmas party, but even the prospect of _tiny robots_ delighted Pidge.

Altech was the leading technology company of the year—the last five years, actually. It had its hands in everything from Virtual Reality to space travel, and to Pidge it was nearly _magical_ ; the problem was, most other computer engineers felt the same way. Her two closest friends, Lance and Hunk, had made the transfer from their jobs at Garrison fairly seamlessly—Hunk was a fabulous mechanical engineer, and Lance’s charisma was a skillset in itself—but Pidge had yet to apply for any of the listings for Computer Engineering. By the time she’d screw up her courage to apply, the listings were always filled; so it was at Garrison she stayed. Her parents were proud—their daughter was one of the youngest engineers at the nation’s leading military tech producer—but the shine of her government-issued ID had worn off for her long ago.

“You’re lucky I already bought your Christmas gift,” Lance said, smirking, “or I’d have let _this_ be your present if I knew you’d be this jazzed.”

“Don’t say ‘jazzed’,” Pidge said, nose wrinkling. “But honestly, Lance—this is great. _Beyond_ great. Will I get to meet your team?” Lance always had great things to say about his team. There was Hunk, of course, but she had yet to meet the other names he threw out often, like Shiro, Keith, and Coran.

At this, Lance’s smile froze a little. “Well, they’ll be there, yeah—and you’ll definitely get to see Hunk—but, ah… I’m not exactly supposed to bring a guest unless they’re a spouse or fiancé. So I can point them out to you from afar?”

Pidge nodded. “Right,” she laughed. “Sneaking. Forgot about that. No worries; I’m sure I’ll be more than preoccupied.”

“I’m sure you will.” His smile had turned… fond, before he seemed to school his features into neutrality. “So, yeah—to get you in, I might need to tell the people at the door we’re together. Is that cool with you?”

She tried desperately not to imagine how it might feel to walk in on Lance’s arm, for everyone inside to see them and think they were _together_. Was it cool with her? 

_You’ve got no idea._

She shook her head to clear it. “Uh, it’s the _Altea Estate_. I’ll tell them I’m a bloodthirsty cyborg if it gets me in, Lance.”

“Right,” he laughed. “Well, that’s sorted, then. Once we’re in, we can just split off and no one will have to know you came with me.”

It was a little harder to ignore the feeling of disappointment that welled up unwelcome in her stomach, but she managed with a huff of hopefully-not-forced-sounding laughter. “Sure. So… I’ll see you at six tomorrow?”

“Party starts at seven,” Lance said. “So maybe more like six-thirty, unless—you’re not one of those girls who needs an hour to get ready, are you?”

Pidge nearly mirrored Lance’s own look of horror before settling on a trusty glare. “Lance.”

He cracked an easy grin. “Thank God. Having to wait an hour for your date to finish, like, winging her eyeliner? Let me tell you— _not fun_.”

She snorted in spite of herself. “I can only imagine.” She downed the last of her latte and checked her watch. “Six-thirty works for me. I’ve got nothing tomorrow.”

“Great!” Lance’s phone buzzed, and his face fell as he checked the notification. “Agh, I’ve got a call in a few minutes I forgot about. I’d better head out.”

“Lance, it’s a Friday afternoon!” She frowned. Lance never had anything on his schedule Friday afternoons—it was why they could grab coffee for an incredibly extended lunch hour. No one liked afternoon meetings at either Altech or Garrison.

He groaned, dragging a palm down his face. “I know. Not my plan; I think Lotor just likes making my life miserable.”

“Oh, _fuck_ that guy,” Pidge muttered. “You’d better get going.”

“Yeah.” Lance sighed, then pushed his chair back from the table to stand up. “Well—I’ll see ya tomorrow?”

“Yep!” She managed a smile for him as he set off for his office. “Good luck with His Majesty.”

He turned just as he reached the front of the coffeehouse and pursed his lips in a final farewell gesture. “Gonna need it,” he quipped, before the jingle bells over the door rang at his departure.

Pidge let out a deep breath and stared back down at her empty ceramic mug. _Fuck that guy,_ she thought, again. 

Lotor was… well, he was a lot to explain. A board member at Altech, he’d managed to take a lot of the credit for the company’s success, despite the brunt of the work having fallen to Allura, the daughter of company founder Alfor and the current Altech CEO—and, along the way, he’d convinced the woman to _marry_ him. The wedding would be in the coming spring, and media outlets everywhere were already speculating about what was to be the Most Anticipated Wedding in Silicon Valley.

There was also the minor issue of his unabated hatred of one Lance McClain.

It really was in the past, and Pidge didn’t let it bother her often—but Lance had worked fairly closely with Allura in his first year at Altech, and he’d definitely had a _thing_ for her. (And who wouldn’t, really? She was brilliant, beautiful, and the CEO of the most innovative company this century had ever seen. It wasn’t like anybody could compete.) To Lance’s credit, he’d actually kept his feelings mostly under wraps—that first year had seen unprecedented growth for Altech, and Allura had been under a lot of pressure. A co-worker’s possibly-unrequited feelings wouldn’t have helped things. So Lance had confided primarily in Hunk, and occasionally Pidge—until Lotor had walked in on Lance and Hunk in the break room.

Pidge hadn’t been there, obviously, but apparently Lotor had—rather aggressively—staked some sort of claim on Allura, to which Lance had retorted that _no one could claim Allura, she was her own person_ , to which Lotor had laughed… 

Hunk had told her, later, that it was an actual miracle Lance hadn’t done something to get himself fired. She believed him. And then, later that same month, the news broke: Lotor and Allura were an item. The tech and celeb worlds had been perfectly abuzz. Lance had been perfectly heartbroken. And to top it all off, Lotor had been moved to a management position over a number of new teams at Altech, including Lance’s; and he’d seemingly done everything he could to make Lance’s life a living hell from that point on.

So yeah— _fuck that guy_.

Pidge pulled out her phone to find a recent text from Hunk.

_**Hunk:** got any Friday plans?_

She huffed a short sigh.

_**Pidge:** fuck lotor_

_**Hunk:** don’t let lance hear you say that, he’ll be livid_

_**Pidge:** dude he’s got lance in a 4 o’clock on a FRIDAY_

_**Hunk:** ..._

_**Hunk:** yeah ok fuck lotor_

Pidge snorted. Though, admittedly, her hatred of the guy ran a little deeper than she wanted it to, everyone who knew Lance hated Lotor on his behalf.

_**Pidge:** other than brooding, I’ll probably be looking at blueprints for the Altea Estate._

_**Hunk:** brooding, eh? ;)_

_**Pidge:** shut up. I’d brood over Lotor being a dick no matter who was suffering._

_**Hunk:** sure ;)_

_**Hunk:** blueprints? why blueprints?_

_**Pidge:** oh! guess what!!_

_**Pidge:** guess who’s gonna be seeing you tomorrow night at the party? (and who’s gonna be scouring every inch of the estate we’re allowed into??)_

_**Hunk:** whoa! no way! :D how are you swinging that??_

_**Pidge:** lance is gonna sneak me in as his date_

There was a long pause as Hunk’s ‘typing’ icon appeared and disappeared. Pidge felt her gut twist irritably; she knew what he was thinking.

_**Hunk:** Katie, are you sure that’s a good idea?_

She closed her eyes for a moment before replying.

_**Pidge:** it’s fine. we’re gonna split off at the entrance so no one sees us together._

_**Hunk:** ..._

_**Hunk:** I just don’t want to see either of you hurt yourselves again._

Pidge bit her lip. She didn’t want Lance hurt, either, not after having to watch the fallout after Allura; but she knew Hunk’s concern was on her account. She was only going to hurt herself if she thought about this any harder than it warranted.

_**Pidge:** i’m not dumb. i’m not pretending this means anything. honestly i’m just excited i’ll get to see the estate._

_**Hunk:** alright. just… i mean i know it sounds cliche, but be careful ok?_

_**Hunk:** also_

_**Hunk:** Home Alone is on Netflix. wanna watch tonight? lance has that family thing._

_**Pidge:** i’m so down. see you at 8?_

_**Hunk:** hell yeah_

Well, a distraction was way better than whatever half-hearted plan she was going to make for seeing every possible sight at the Estate.

—and there it was. Pidge finally had to admit defeat; the fact that she had to be distracted from something meant that there was _something_. 

It had been like this the first time, when she’d ignored the first twinges of discomfort at the back of her mind in favor of being there for Lance post-Allura, right up until she found herself ugly-crying onto Hunk’s shoulder over feelings she’d repressed so forcefully she hadn’t even known they were there. It’d been about a year since she’d been able to think the words— _I have a crush on Lance McClain_ —and, since admitting it, dealing with it had been easier. But it ebbed and flowed; and right now it was taking everything in Pidge not to deal with this problem the easiest way she knew how and just bottle it up. Pretend it wasn’t happening.

Unfortunately, with the party tomorrow, it looked like pretending was about the only thing she could do.


	2. the road not taken looks real good now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads-up: if you haven't seen the movie _Die Hard_ , 1) it's the greatest Christmas movie of all time? why not??, and 2) there are a number of references made to it in this chapter; it's nothing vital to the plot, but it's always fun to be able to follow the banter! [The Wikipedia synopsis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard#Plot) is pretty informative if you need a summary or a character refresher.

_”Pidge, if this is gonna be too hard for you, you don’t have to do it,” Hunk had said before she’d made it out his door the previous night. “I mean—you could go with me, if you wanted.”_

_“No offense, Hunk,” she’d said, face scrunching, “but I’d be_ way _less comfortable pretending to be your date. Plus, you’ve got Shay.”_

_He’d met that with a grimace. “Right—but I mean, she’s not coming, and we wouldn’t have t—I mean—”_

_“It’s alright, Hunk. I appreciate the thought, but again—this isn’t gonna be more than a fake introduction at the door. We’re not going to have to pretend to do anything past the threshold.”_

_She’d been right, of course. Hunk had chewed his lip for a moment before sighing. “I just hate thinking about you putting yourself through, like, unnecessary pain. I know it’s not a big deal—but like, I just worry.”_

_“I know.” And she did. Hunk worried for his friends more than they worried for themselves, sometimes. “And really—it’s uncomfortable, sure, but… I’ll handle it. I’ve been handling it for about a year now.”_

_Hunk had swallowed and looked away from her. “I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about saying anything?”_

_“No,” she’d said firmly. “He doesn’t need that right now.” Pidge knew Lance; since Allura, he’d hardly so much as _looked_ at other girls, much less talked about them with her—and with Lance, silence was almost always a reliable tell. She wouldn’t even bring up the idea of dating someone _else_ to him right now, much less add on the complications of dating a _friend_. She’d had this conversation with Hunk before—he knew where she stood, but for some reason he kept finding it in himself to re-broach the subject every so often._

_“Alright,” he said eventually, subdued. “Well, I’ll… see you tomorrow night, I guess.” He’d huffed a tired laugh, and she’d smiled at him._

_“Yeah—see you at the Estate!”_

* * *

Hunk worried too much, Pidge had decided. 

This was going to be fantastic—she was going to get free food, meet tiny robots, and experience the Altea Estate firsthand. Maybe she’d get to see Allura herself, from a distance. She’d stayed awake once she’d gotten home and mapped out the rooms she wanted to see on the property; she hoped the kitchen would be open for her to take a look at the cooking appliances, and Lance had advised her to inspect the fireplace in the main living room. 

She couldn’t _wait_. It was going to be a great night. _(And… there was always a tear-filled Sunday and ice cream from Hunk if it wasn’t.)_

The clock on the wall behind her read 6:23— _plenty_ of time, even _with_ eyeliner, she thought. She stood leaning on the small kitchen counter her one bedroom apartment afforded, turning the tiny gear on the small golden ring she wore—an old high school graduation gift from her mother, now something like a good luck charm. The party was semi-formal, so the only cocktail dress she owned would have to suffice. It was very nearly a Christmas green, and she prayed it would be subtle enough for her to fall as far under the radar as possible.

At a playful rap on the door, Pidge pushed herself off the counter with her forearms. _Altea Estate, here we come!_ She swung open the door with a wide grin on her face, ready to—

—Lance was wearing a suit. 

He was standing at her door, lips parted a sliver, hair just barely wind-mussed, _wearing a fucking navy suit and Pidge was going to die right here_.

“—hey.” Her voice nearly cracked, and she felt her cheeks flare so hot that there was no way he couldn’t see it. _Oh fuck._

Lance opened his mouth once—twice—and swallowed. “Your… your hair is down.”

Her hand flew to where the ends of her hair fell just at her shoulder. She hardly ever wore it down, opting instead for a short ponytail, now that she’d decided to grow out the bob she’d opted for in university—but tonight hardly seemed the occasion for a ponytail, and she didn’t have enough hair yet for a fancy twist. “I… yeah. I’ve been growing it out,” she said, lamely.

“It… it looks really nice. _You_ look really nice.” He blinked, eyes a little unfocused as he met her gaze. Then, without warning, he let out a sharp, dry laugh, cutting through the moment. “Geez, sorry Pidge, I—I didn’t expect just now to feel like picking a girl up for Prom. My brain just took me… _way_ back for a second there.”

She felt her nerves push the nervous laughter out of her lungs faster than she’d had time to process what Lance had even said. “No, I—well, I never had a date to Prom, but this… is pretty much how I imagined it going.” _Minus the one-sided feelings and maybe the lack of flowers. Don’t dates usually bring like, a corsage or something? Or—_

The air shifted mercifully; Lance’s jaw dropped. “You never had a date to Prom?”

She gave him a half-smile as she turned to grab her phone from where it rested on the counter. “I mean, that was years ago,” she said, “but yeah. I was… a lot quieter back then. I think I only went one year, and even then I only really tagged along with my brother and his date.”

“You’re kidding,” he said quietly once she’d pulled out her keys to lock the front door behind her; but his voice lacked the amusement, or even the pity, people usually expressed when she told them about things like Prom. He sounded… surprised.

“It’s not like I’d have had much fun anyway,” Pidge said, shrugging. “I’ve never been great at parties. Undercover tech operations excluded.” She pivoted on her heel from her door to face him with a grin. “Where’re you parked?”

Lance blinked down at her for a moment. “Wh—oh, just outside your building. There was an empty spot, if you can believe it.”

“ _Right_ outside? Hah. God is real, checkmate atheists.”

* * *

Pidge’s jaw had already dropped before the estate had even come into view—the guard house at the entrance had been _entirely_ automated, from the license plate reader to the robot that asked politely to see their identification before waving them through to the road paved with a substance so reflective it looked like glass.

She saw Lance grinning at her out of the corner of her eye, his head shaking. “Pidge, that’s just the entrance. There’s, like, a million more things to see here.”

“I know,” she breathed. “That’s why this is so exciting.” _If that’s just the guard house, what’s the rest going to be like?_

“You’re adorable.” He drummed his fingers over the steering wheel in a pattern only he knew, and for a split second Pidge’s lungs wouldn’t pull in air. _Get it together, Katie._ “Well, I’m no engineer,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure this stretch of road is, like, regular pavement coated with some kind of reinforced plastic—it’s got weight sensors to track where cars are on the drive. _Those_ are hooked up to the cameras along here, so their systems stick together all the footage of each car into one long video per vehicle.”

“No way.” Pidge peered out at where the headlights met the road, straining to see it in the dark December evening. It just looked like a shiny road; incredibly sleek. “Is the plastic for anything other than, like, aesthetic?”

Lance laughed. “No idea. I’m just the Communications guy, remember? Oh—see those flashing lights over there? I’m pretty sure that’s the drone charging station.”

Though there wasn’t much to see in the dark, Lance’s memory of which lights connected to which systems was honestly impressive. He explained as many of the systems as he remembered on the drive that, while thrilling, was reaching ridiculous levels of long. By the time the Estate itself came into view, a thing of glass and modern architecture and tasteful Christmas lights, Pidge felt like she’d already witnessed some of the more impressive feats of modern technology via the security systems alone.

After a moment, as the final curve of the drive came into view, Lance glanced over at her. “What? Not gonna ogle the house, too?”

She smacked his arm. “I’m not ‘ogling’ anything—and all I see here is just a billionaire’s house. I’ll… _marvel_ , once we’re inside.”

“Right,” he said, smacking a hand on the wheel as his head jerked up. “There’s a couple of things I forgot to tell you about getting inside. Nothing—nothing big, I mean there’s like a million people here to blend into so you mostly just have to not, like, blow anything up. But you’ll probably want to avoid Allura, if you see her—she’s really good about wanting to get to know all her employees and their families, so if she sees you she’ll probably stop you and like, ask you who you are and stuff.”

Pidge didn’t miss the admiration in his voice as he spoke of Allura; the worst thing was that it seemed entirely warranted. “That’s very kind of her,” she found herself saying without thinking, like she was trying to agree with Lance’s unspoken affection. _’Kind’? Geez, Katie._ “I mean—if I do run into her, though? Do I just… tell her I’m with you?”

He hesitated, just for a moment. “—yeah. I can handle the questions if that happens, so don’t worry about it.”

She opened her mouth to ask if he was sure, or maybe if he was okay (his voice sounded tight, there, for a second) but they were at the entrance now, getting out of the car, and Lance was handing over his keys to the—unfortunately not robotic—valet. Guests were milling on the stairs just outside, and light holiday music drifted from the entrance; Pidge shivered, not sure if it was the breeze or the sudden realization that she was _about to walk into the Altea Estate_. It was showtime.

“You ready?” Lance was suddenly behind her, breath on her ear. He probably hadn’t meant to ask it that softly, but the cause of her goosebumps was undeniable now. Pidge only nodded, not quite trusting her voice. “Alright. One last question.”

She turned to find him studying her face seriously, the corners of his lips tugging downward. Behind them, his car pulled away with the valet. “Y-yeah?”

He took a deep breath. “If there are any terrorists in there, will you sneak into one of the blocked-off areas of the house, hack everything, and take them out one-by-one as you radio the police outside—while _I_ distract the leader and pretend I have no connections to you?”

_The inevitable_ Die Hard _reference._ Why hadn’t she expected it sooner? Pidge quirked an eyebrow. “... shouldn’t sneaking away be _your_ job, _McClain_?”

Lance stared for a second, and then something behind his eyes lit up like—well, like a Christmas tree. “Wait—you’re totally right! But like—you’re the one who doesn’t work for Altech, so it just—”

“You’d give up the chance to be Bruce Willis for _plot consistency_? Who are you and what have you done with Lance McClain?”

He laughed—something more like a cackle, really—and suddenly Pidge felt his fingers weave in between hers as they started towards the doors; she didn’t reflexively pull away, but it was a near thing. “That’s Lance _Gennero_ to you, Roy.”

“I can’t believe you’re giving yourself _Holly_ ,” she groused, turning away so that the grin across her face wouldn’t ruin the effect.

“Hey, if it gets me the chance to effectively give the finger to Hans, aka Lotor, I’m one-hundred percent in, dude,” he said, nearly under his breath as they approached the bouncers—guards?—at the door. 

Pidge waited until the last second, just before one of the men held out their hand for invitations and IDs, before whispering, “Pretty sure Lotor is just Ellis.”

“Sir, we’ll need to see your invita—”

And then Lance was having a choking fit, right at the entrance of the most high-tech residence in the world, and Pidge was cackling and smacking him between his shoulderblades, ignoring the unamused expression on the bouncer’s face the way she always did when she and Lance did stupid shit in public.

“—sorry,” Lance gasped, straightening and reaching a hand into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “Let me just—” 

His brow furrowed in the pale light radiating from the myriad of fairy lights flickering just inside the entryway, and Pidge felt her laughter fade and settle into something warm in her chest. This man was sneaking her into a holiday party so that she could look at the tech inside for a couple of hours; and he was doing it while making terrible Die Hard references and wearing a _fucking navy suit_ so well-tailored he looked like he could own the place, and this was _not_ a good place to be letting her mind wander—

—and now his brows were furrowed at _her_ because she’d been fucking _staring_. “—’d you check in your wallet?” she asked, voice lower than she’d intended. Lance made a brief _mm_ sound and began fishing his wallet out of his slacks, then an _ah!_ of victory.

He cleared his throat, quieter, as though to reset himself. “Here’s my invite—” He took Pidge’s hand again as he handed the piece of paper over, and she felt herself go very, very still. “—and fiancee, Katie Holt.”

The bouncer gave the invite a once-over, then handed it back. “You’re good to go,” he said, somewhat mechanically. “Merry Christmas.”

Lance squeezed her hand as they passed through the doors and into the mercifully warm foyer. An open archway, decked in a tasteful garland, led into what looked like the living room, where a large crowd of guests mingled. “Yippee-ki-yay,” he murmured.

Pidge covered the shiver that went up her entire spine with a cough. “We’re in,” she agreed.

Lance pulled back suddenly to look at her with wide eyes. “No!” he cried. “You have to use your hacker voice and go: ‘I’m in’! C’mon!”

She rolled her eyes but repeated in the lowest voice she could muster, “I’m in.”

Lance snickered. “What are you, Mr. T? James Earl Jones?”

She lifted her chin with a smirk. “I’m John McClane, bitch.”

“Damn right,” he said, grinning; and with a final squeeze of her hand, he dropped it. “Alright. Have fun. Don’t talk to too many people. _Observe all the technology._ ”

“Sounds like the perfect night,” she said. “See you in a couple of hours?”

He nodded. “I’ll text you.”

“Great—have fun, Lance!”

Lance gave her a gentler smile as they moved towards the archway. “You too, Pidge. Don’t blow anything up.”

“No promises,” she said over her shoulder. “Oh—there’s the fireplace!”

* * *

And it had been as easy as that.

Mildly uncomfortable, sure, and maybe a little too close to a bad high school date for comfort—but it was over now, she never had to think about it again, and _holy shit was the Altea Estate worth every second of it_.

The fireplace Lance had pointed her towards functioned like a _thermostat_ , adjusting the heat of the flames according to the temperature inside, and it had _self-replacing wood_ ; it seemed to work like a bowling alley pinsetter, removing old ashes and charred logs to replace them with new ones.

Televisions lined the wall of one room, projecting a view of what appeared to be video feed from outside—just an unnecessarily expensive window, Pidge thought, until information like the current temperature, air quality, time, and visible constellations began flashing across the screen. Still unnecessarily expensive—but an actually cool window.

The massive deck (it was _heated_ and there weren’t any walls! How the hot air wasn’t escaping was a mystery she wanted to work out.) had large, sliding glass doors that also featured a light-up touch display; it seemed to feature heating controls for the outside, status updates on other areas of the house, and some light switch controls, among other things. Pidge guessed it was probably one of the main control hubs for the Estate’s systems, its interface made a little simpler for this evening so that the guests didn’t have access to anything too private. _Oh, I’m_ definitely _coming back to this later._

Also true to Lance’s reports, a drone had approached her just as she was lifting a finger to tap a status update for a room labelled ‘Wine Cellar’, hovering with drinks perched atop it— _incredible balance precision_ , she thought—and chirped, “Welcome, Pidge Katie Holt!”

“Huh. That’s my name on Facebook,” she told it. “Is that how you recognized me?”

“Altech algorithms draw only from secure, open-source data!” it replied.

Well, Facebook’s face recognition software wasn’t open-source, but she supposed her name and profile picture and _other, third-party_ facial recognition tech would all be publically accessible. “Good drone,” she said absently, plucking a glass of what looked like prosecco from the platter it held.

“Thank you! Your feedback is invaluable to Altech Industries!”

Suddenly, Pidge spotted a flash of white hair—Allura. As the CEO entered the room, she was met with excited greetings and a few tipsy cries of, “Merry Christmas!” The woman beamed at those closest to her, a smile that looked well-practiced from countless magazine and tech write-up photoshoots. Though Pidge had never seen her in person before, Allura looked… tired.

She also looked like she could be heading in Pidge’s direction. Taking a quick sip of her prosecco, Pidge ducked out of the room, somewhat thankful for the push towards the kitchen—she was ready to geek out over automated cooking appliances.

“Hey! Pidge!” Hunk stood at the (touchscreen-topped??) kitchen island, holding a bowl of fruit he’d apparently snatched from the counter. 

With a grin, she headed towards him. “Hunk! I made it!”

“Dude, okay, one—I can’t believe you’re here! Two—check this _out_.” Pidge watched as he plucked an apple from the bowl, set it on the island, and a circle appeared around it with an accompanying display:

_**Apple / Red Delicious / 76 grams** _

She felt her jaw drop. “There’s no way. How in the world—”

“I know!” he cried, and a few guests milling by the fridge shot them a curious look. “I know,” he repeated, quieter. “And it’ll suggest recipes based on ingredients you set on it, or make suggestions about spices and things to add, and I just—”

“Dude, I would murder someone so that you could have this,” Pidge said seriously. Hunk stared at her for a second before bursting into laughter.

“ _Man_ , I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, setting the bowl down to pull her into a quick hug. “No one else gets this excited about kitchen stuff with me. Also—you look, like, _amazing_? How did Lance not have an aneurysm when he picked you up?”

She felt herself turn, presumably, a bright shade of red. “It was only awkward for a couple of seconds,” she started, “but—”

“Wait, are you serious?”

She waved a hand as nonchalantly as she could. _Damn it._ “It was just when I opened the door; I don’t think either of us expected it to feel like he was picking me up for a date, so we just kind of stood there for a couple of seconds.” She frowned when he burst out laughing again. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough to change how ridiculous you guys are,” he said. She narrowed her eyes at him, but his cheeks were, in fact, innocently unflushed.

“Let’s not do this again,” she muttered, setting her glass on the counter. _**Prosecco,**_ it flashed. _**13 oz.**_ “The engagement was only two months ago, and Lance doesn’t need this right now.”

“And I’m telling you, Pidge, that’s exactly what Lance said a year ago about Allura,” Hunk said, mirth leaving his eyes in favor of a sudden sincerity. “I know you don’t like talking about this, but I—I don’t think I could take watching this go the same way.”

She snorted in spite of herself. “There’s no need to worry about _that_ , Hunk; of all the things Lotor might do to Lance, proposing to him isn’t one of them.”

He started to laugh again—before the expression froze on his face at something just behind her. Pidge felt her own smirk go rigid. _There’s no fucking way._

“Lotor! _He-ey!_ How’s it going, man?” Hunk was fumbling, but at least he was being charming about it. Battling the grimace that threatened to envelop her face, Pidge turned with a weak smile.

Lotor himself stood on the other side of the kitchen island, only a single hair out of place in his otherwise immaculate appearance. 

He looked nearly identical to the last time Pidge had seen him—on the cover of _GQ_ last month. Well-pressed black suit, white tie, pale hair tied back with a black silk ribbon. His lips were pursed in the way she’d always imagined was permanent, like he’d just swallowed the lemon that no one dared serve him water without. And he was frowning at _her_.

“You mentioned Lance McClain,” he said, and he wasn’t even _bothering_ to hide the disdain in his Received Pronunciation British voice that sounded too arrogant to be real. “Do you know where he is? I wish to speak with him.”

Pidge felt her chin lift even as Hunk placed a hand on her elbow, a warning. _Fuck this guy._ “Sorry,” she said in controlled monotone. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

His nostrils flared, but Lotor remained markedly stoic. “I see. And you are—?”

She saw no reason to lie. It wasn’t like _Lotor_ cared about who his underlings were. “Katie Holt.”

His upper lip twitched, a shadow of a sneer. “Well, Miss Holt. Should you see him, please inform Mr. McClain that I’m looking for him.”

Her eyes flickered to Hunk’s for a fraction of a second—more than enough time for her glance to scream _CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS ASSHOLE?_ and Hunk to respond _UGH I KNOW but be CAREFUL, Pidge_. Her eye roll was, of course, implied. 

“Certainly… sir.”

And oh, this was _fun_ —Lotor knew he was being challenged, that something defiant rested behind the subtle arch in her eyebrow, and yet he’d never met her before in his life. She was walking a thin line, she knew; but she wouldn’t get this kind of chance again. Pidge would be proud to be a mild frustration for the man who’d been nothing but awful to her best friend.

With only a brisk nod, Lotor stalked off in the direction of the next room. Beside her, Hunk let out a long breath. “Dude, that was _not_ smart.”

“Don’t care. Felt great.”

“It’s not gonna feel great when you can’t get a job at Altech because you gave the CEO’s future husband the equivalent of the finger,” Hunk groaned, burying his head in his arms folded across the countertop. After a second, he half-lifted his face with a smirk. “That was hella satisfying, though. Vendetta, much?”

She shrugged, looking away. Her fingers had found their way to fiddling with the gear on her ring again. “Maybe. I’ll find it in me to regret it later, I guess.”

A comforting hand came to rest on her shoulder. “I totally get it. Honestly… I’m a little jealous. If I didn’t have to worry about keeping my job…” He trailed off, a sardonic chuckle on his lips. “Real talk though: do you actually not know where Lance is? Because I haven’t seen him all night. I miss my bud.”

Pidge shook her head. “Nope, wasn’t lying about that—we split off at the entrance, and I haven’t run into him since.”

“Hm.” His hand slid off of her shoulder to rest on the counter. **_Human hand / 16 oz._** “Wonder what he’s up t—”

A familiar, indignified shout burst from the next room over; right where Lotor had stalked off to. “Dude, it’s _Christmas!_ Are we really doing this right now?”

_There he is._

Pidge’s eyes met Hunk’s for another shared grimace as they both started for the doorway; Operation Rescue Lance didn’t need words exchanged to be initiated. More voices drifted their direction, agitated.

“—we don’t hit this quarter’s quotas, we’re going to have more problems than just working through the holidays,” came Lotor’s low hiss. “Altech expects its employees to have _drive_.”

“Lotor, we can save this for Monday, can’t we?” This voice was softer, placating— _Allura_. Pidge froze, barely out of view from the door.

“Shit,” she whispered. “Allura’s not supposed to see me here.”

Hunk frowned but nodded. “I can’t exactly charge in there, either,” he whispered back. “Lotor might kill me for interrupting.”

“Yeah, but at least you work with them!”

Inside the next room, Lotor scoffed. “At the rate McClain works, he’s going to need tomorrow to even come _close_ to this week’s milestone.”

Pidge cringed, waiting for Lance’s inevitable snap—he was bound to say something stupid when someone _this_ arrogant was involved. But then a second passed. And then another. And then… “I’ll try to be in the office tomorrow,” came Lance’s tired reply. “Don’t worry about our quotas.”

And fuck if he didn’t sound _broken_ , like the will to fight had just… left him. This wasn’t their Lance—their Lance wouldn’t take an insult to his work ethic just lying down. Would he? Pidge decided then and there that something was very, very wrong.

Allura’s voice made a slight noise of protest. “Oh, no—surely you don’t need—”

“It shouldn’t be too much of a burden,” Lotor interrupted, so fucking _calmly_ that Pidge’s vision flashed white. “After all, it’s not as though he has anyone waiting for him at home.”

Pidge heard Hunk’s voice warn, “Katie—”

—but she was yanking the ring from her mother off of her right hand and twisting it onto her left ring finger instead, lips curled back in a snarl. “ _Fuck_ this guy,” she spat, then screwed her eyes shut, schooling her expression into something as unaffected as possible.

“ _Katie—_ ” Hunk tried again, but she held up a hand.

“Don’t,” she said, voice dangerously light. “I’m ending this.”

And then her feet were carrying her through the doorway, into the room where Lance—where he—

Lance stood at the center of the room under a large chandelier, chin tucked nearly into his chest, looking cornered despite half a room of open space and oriental rug behind him. Lotor seemed to stand a head taller than him, looking nearly down his nose in a kind of disdain Pidge would have found comical if it weren’t for the horribly, horribly wrong expression on Lance’s face. He wasn’t fighting back. _He wasn’t fighting._

And then she was crossing the floor, a too-bright smile on her face, crying, “La-ance! _There_ you are! Why’d you leave me alone so long, huh?”

Three faces snapped towards her. 

_Oh shit. What the hell am I doing?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention this was supposed to be a one-shot? _Hah._
> 
> I'm hoping to get the final two chapters up before Christmas; the exact schedule will be pretty lax (like my current holiday calendar) but the goal is to make this a finished Christmas present for all the lovely Plance shippers out there. :')
> 
> See y'all soon (when the shit goes down!)


	3. the only soul who can tell which smiles I'm fakin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> out of the frying pan, into the fire (& then into another fire, & then another...)
> 
> Pidge gets the chaos she signed up for. Lance gets the chaos he didn't.

Pidge’s heart was pounding so hard she barely trusted herself to speak again, let alone hear anything above the thudding metronome in her ears—but Lance was only staring at her, open-mouthed. _Some help._

Willing him to _play along, dammit_ with her eyes, she reached out for him as she approached and wound an arm around his waist as if she could count on him to at least return the gesture. He did after a moment, hand coming to rest on her shoulder as firmly as a bad Prom photo—that was to say, barely there at all.

 _For the sake of this charade, you better not_ look _as stiff as stiff as you_ feel _right now, McClain._

She let her eyes shift over to Lotor— _fuck, ignore the narrowed eyes_ —and knew she had to bring up their previous interaction somehow. Anything, anything at all that might make him keep his mouth shut for as long as it took for her to get Lance out of there—“Oh _good_ , you found him!”

Well. There was a reason she’d always been up in the tech booth for theater shows.

Allura, miraculously, was only beaming at her, then Lance. “Who’s this, Lance? I don’t think we’ve been introduced!”

“Oh, ah, this is Pi—Katie,” he stammered, and _oh_ she wished she hadn’t just gone in for the tucked-into-his-side position because she could feel every one of his vocal vibrations in her arm and down her ribs. “Katie Holt. My, uh, fiancée.”

She nearly breathed a sigh of relief—he _had_ caught on—but the air felt stuck in her throat at the sound of Lance calling her by her full name. Allura looked back at her, genuinely delighted.

“Oh, how wonderful! It’s _lovely_ to meet you, Katie,” she said, right hand absently crossing her body to rest on Lotor’s upper arm.

“You must be Allura,” Pidge said, smile coming a little easier—she could already tell Allura felt easier to talk to. Maybe she stood a chance at keeping this charade up for a minute or so, after all. “It’s great to finally meet you. Lance has nothing but good things to say about you—” _oh shit shit shit shit_ “—and, uh, Altech.”

It was absolutely true—Lance really _did_ have nothing but good things to say about Allura, and her leadership remained one of his and Hunk’s favorite parts of their job. But Pidge had no idea how much of Lance’s inner turmoil Allura’d been privy to for the last year-and-a-half; the thought of accidentally muddying the waters between them any more than she already just had made something twist painfully in her chest.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lotor remained expressionless, but Allura laughed lightly. “I’m glad to hear it. Now—” The corners of her eyes tightened, along with Pidge’s breathing. “—I haven’t seen you at any company events before, that I can recall. Is that simply my poor memory?”

“No—” Pidge said, just as Lance answered, “Not at all—we’re, ah, pretty newly engaged.”

Pidge snuck a glance up at Lance, disguised as a bashful smile, to find him looking down at her, a matching expression on his face. The small smile on his lips nearly sent her into cardiac arrest, it looked so convincing—but she knew she was probably the only one who could read the flicker of uncertainty that passed behind his eyes.

“Oh, _congratulations!_ ” Allura beamed up at Lotor, who sent her a tastefully fond look. “All the fun of love without the mountains of wedding planning. Don’t worry—it’ll catch up with you soon.” She gave Lotor a playful nudge, and he—he actually cracked a smile at her, albeit a sheepish one.

“Hah—yeah, we’re not… not that far along yet,” Lance said, the same false brightness creeping into his voice that Pidge knew probably saturated her own.

Pidge opened her mouth to add something—anything—to the conversation, when voices burst through the door to her and Lance’s backs.

“—Lance! Allura! There you are!” Pidge turned, arm sliding off of Lance’s waist, to see a man whose orange mustache overshadowed every other aspect of his outfit (which was a green three-piece, so… impressive.) “We were hoping to get our lunch group together for a group photo. All we’re missing now is number two!”

It took a second for Pidge to notice the two men who had arrived with Orange Mustache Man; they stood just behind him, a stark contrast in their varying shades of black and charcoal. To her relief, she heard Lotor mutter behind her something that sounded like _excuse me_ before his figure receded back towards the kitchen out of the corner of her eye.

She heard Allura exclaim behind her, “Oh! Certainly! Lance, have you seen Hunk?”

For the second time that night, Pidge looked up at Lance to find him already looking down at her. “Not yet,” he answered. “Have you, P—Katie?”

Pidge felt all eyes present converge on her. “I, uh—he was in the kitchen a few minutes ago,” she said. _Shit. We’re not getting out of this yet, are we?_

They were not.

“Have you all met Katie, yet?” she heard Allura ask, just before the woman stepped to her other side. “She’s Lance’s fiancée!”

Apart from an appropriate _Ah!_ from Orange Mustache Man, the group was… markedly silent. One of the men behind Orange, well-built with a streak of white through his hair, smiled and cleared his throat. “Is she now?”

Pidge didn’t know how, but he _knew_.

She could sense Lance running a nervous hand through his hair before she’d even turned back to him to confirm it. “Yep!” he said, popping the ‘p’. “It’s, uh—it’s pretty recent, so we’re only just, uh… getting the word out.”

“Lance, we were all in the office yesterday—” started the second man, before Lance gave a tight laugh and laced his fingers through hers.

“Katie,” he interjected, “have you met my team?”

She forced a smile when she realized her actual expression had been bordering on _confused and unprepared_. “No, I haven’t.”

So _this_ was Lance’s team; as horrible of an introduction as it was, Pidge was also thrilled to be able to shake their hands and put a face to each of the names. Orange Mustache Man was Coran, Altech’s lead marketing strategist. The man with the white streak of hair was Shiro, who did something with logistics. The person who’d tried to interject just before Lance cut them off was Keith, a man whose expression seemed to always hover around _unamused_ ; Pidge decided she liked him immediately.

“We’re not all technically in the same department,” Lance explained, “but we’re pretty much a team. A lunch team, anyway.”

“And you still haven’t met Hunk yet, have you?” Allura asked.

Pidge’s smile grew genuine. “Actually, I do know Hunk,” she said. “He, Lance, and I all used to work together before they applied to Altech. I’m guessing he’ll show up soon; he saw me head in here.”

Holy crow, was honesty refreshing. When her hand brushed against Lance’s again, she wasn’t sure whose fingers curled into whose, but there was something infinitely easier about it. Something that also threatened to stab at the feelings she’d sealed as tightly as her heart could take, far away from tonight.

She saw Shiro’s brows knit together, only for a second. “So you’ve known each other a long time, huh?”

“Since university, actually,” she told him. There wasn’t any harm in keeping the lie as close to the truth as possible, was there? “But we were only friends until, uh, early this year.”

“Ah, a whirlwind romance! That sounds like our Lance!” Coran said, laughing. Pidge frowned; she caught Lance sporting a matching expression.

“Coran, dude, a year’s long enough—”

“ _Whirlwind_? We’ve been friends for _years_ —”

Allura smiled once they’d both cut off in a _wait, no, you go first_ manner. “Can we see the ring?” she asked. “Only if you don’t mind.”

Lance’s grip went rigid as Keith snickered. “Yeah, let’s see the ring.”

Pidge grinned—a genuine smile—at perhaps the _one_ part of this idiotic plan she’d actually thought through; her mom’s gear-cog ring rested on her left ring finger, and she held it up so that it caught in the light. Allura gave a customary gasp, and Pidge felt her smile widen. “I’m not really big on gemstones,” she said honestly, “and I’ve always loved engineering things. So this was perfect.”

“It’s beautiful, Katie,” Allura said. “It really suits you.”

Pidge silently thanked her mom for having more expensive taste in jewelry than she ever would, trying not to concentrate on the way Lance’s hand was still stiff in hers. She was actually selling this.

All three of the men made _huh_ -like sounds as they looked at the ring—rather politely, but with at least some genuine interest. “Looks like you did good, Lance,” Shiro said after a moment.

Pidge looked up to find Lance staring down at her outstretched hand, an unreadable expression on his face. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to mess this one up.”

Her heart twisted sharply in her chest; she thanked whatever unseen forces existed that Lance wasn’t looking up to meet her eyes. If he had, she knew he would have seen far more than she’d ever wanted him to.

“Hey guys! You all made it!”

Heads turned towards the sound, and cries of “Hunk!” went up as the final member of their lunch group joined the fray. Lance squeezed her hand but… didn’t let go.

“How are you guys? Have you all tried the _hors d'oeuvres_ yet? They’re incre—” Hunk’s eyes had found Pidge (and Lance’s hand in hers.) Something passed between them—she didn’t know quite _what_ —and his expression changed to a very poor imitation of surprise. “Hey, Pidge! You, uh, made it!”

“Oh, Pidge, huh?” To Pidge’s dismay, Keith was wearing a look that could only be interpreted as… smug. “Lance, you didn’t tell us that Katie was _Pidge_.”

_... what._

“Oh, that makes _much_ more sense,” Allura exclaimed. When Pidge shot her a questioning look, she looked sheepish. “Not—not that there was anything wrong, before. It’s just—Lance never mentioned you at work. But he _did_ speak often of a certain Pidge.” The woman shot her a playful wink, and Pidge felt her stomach drop right out of her body. _He what?_

Lightly tugging on their joined hands, Pidge shot him a genuinely curious (and definitely absolutely not nervous) smile. “You talk about me at work?”

Lance… bit his lip and didn’t look at her. “I—yeah, of course, babe!”

Oh. This was nervous, overcompensating Lance.

As thrilled as Pidge wanted to feel about the pet name, Lance didn’t… he didn’t _do_ that with her. He did it for girls he was trying to flirt with, who made him nervous, who he was trying to convince he had more confidence than he really did. He did it when he felt like there was a part of himself he needed to hide.

Pidge frowned.

Shiro took her concerned look for something else. “Oh, don’t worry. They’re all good things, Katie—or do you prefer Pidge?”

“Either is fine,” she said, honestly. “What kinds of good things…?”

She squeezed Lance’s hand, hoping to let him know she wasn’t actually concerned that he’d been trash-talking her to his co-workers. _That’s not what he’d hide, is it?_

“Oh,” Keith cut in, “just that you’re ‘like, totally amazing with computers’, you’d be ‘the best to work with’, you’re ‘the brightest geek of her age’—his words, not mine.”

Pidge felt Lance’s grip go tense and her own face heat.

“Lance often asks if Altech has any new openings for computer engineers!” Coran put in.

Shiro chuckled. “He holds you over our heads by threatening to get you to hack our computers every time we piss him off.”

At this, Pidge ignored the warmth in her face in favor of raising her eyebrows at Lance, who grinned back at her sheepishly. “You do _what_ now?” 

Laughing, she elbowed at him half-heartedly—and then she just sort of… stayed there, almost leaning into his side, just close enough to feel the heat of him.

Hunk chuckled weakly. “Yeah, I backed him up once by showing them that program you wrote last April Fools’ Day—”

“ _Don’t_ bring that up,” Pidge groaned, but everyone was already laughing with the memory of however much Hunk had shown them of her self-named ‘24-hour virus’. “I was going through a lot and needed to take it out on something.”

“So you chose my filesystem? Pidge, my tax returns were buried in photos of Keanu Reeves for weeks!” Hunk cried to another round of giggling. After a moment, Pidge gave in, snickering a little into Lance’s side.

Lance tensed again. “Guys—were we gonna, uh, take a photo together, or…?”

“Right!” Coran barked. “Yes, let’s—where shall we take it?”

Pidge stared somewhere just between Hunk’s and Keith’s shoulders as everyone began suggesting good photo-op locations, biting her lip. Lance wasn’t alright; for one, he wasn’t usually this _quiet_ , and for another, he was so _stiff_. She was certain she was making him uncomfortable; but he was still holding her hand. Couples didn’t have to hold hands at all times—why wasn’t he dropping it?

It wasn’t as though she could ask. This was torture, she decided—self-wrought, but torture nonetheless. Her mind raced with what he might be thinking—that he hated this, that she’d ruined his image in front of his co-workers, that they could all tell she was faking it, that he’d rather be anywhere but here…

“Hey, Pidge, you wanna take our photo?” Hunk was waving his phone, camera open, in her face. She blinked.

“Y—yeah, sure,” she agreed. “Where at?”

“We were thinking out on the deck in front of the Christmas lights, if the lighting is good enough.” She disentangled her fingers from Lance’s to take the phone from him, nodding. As Lance stepped over to say something to Shiro, Hunk frowned after him. “Pidge… is everything okay?” he asked, softly.

Pidge shook her head. “I’m fine, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she muttered, “but I’m worried about Lance. I think… I think I made the wrong call with this. And I wasn’t expecting everyone else to show up.”

Hunk was silent for a moment. “I’ll see if I can talk to him,” he said. “I’m sure he’s alright—but you guys look a little... tense.”

Pidge cringed. _Shit._ “Are we that obvious?”

But before Hunk could answer, everyone was moving towards the door, and they were being corralled back out towards the deck. Pidge nearly got lost among the large crowds of people in the main living room, until Lance grabbed hold of her wrist.

“Thanks,” she said. Then, quieter, “Are you okay?”

They were still surrounded by people, so she wasn’t surprised when Lance only shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

She bit her lip as she sidestepped a party-goer’s particularly wild hand gesticulations. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for this—”

“Alright, everyone over here!” Coran was calling, just a little too loud over the guests, and Pidge didn’t have time to think about the confused expression that had passed over Lance’s face before she was pulled into being the group photographer.

Once they’d found a spot in front of the lights that didn’t turn them all into dark silhouettes, Pidge was tasked with taking a number of photosets—normal smiling, goofy faces, and something Hunk called, “Paladins!”, in which everyone leapt into a complicated striking of Charlie’s Angels-esque action poses.

“Okay, okay, we should do a family picture now of Shiro and Keith,” Hunk said; Shiro brightened, and Keith seemed to sink even further into himself.

“I hate pictures,” he sighed, but Shiro just ruffled his hair and smiled at the camera as everyone else stepped out of the frame.

“Should… should Keith be smiling?” Pidge asked, not wanting to take something unusable. Keith was still frowning with Shiro’s arm slung over his shoulder.

Shiro laughed. “Take it as is,” he said. “It’ll be true to life.”

Pidge smirked and obliged. She took just a couple of shots, for Keith’s sake, and then—

—Allura was plucking the phone out of Pidge’s hands. “Let’s take one of you and Lance, Katie!”

The strained smile Lance sent her nearly crumbled her resolve to even be there. _He hates this. I shouldn’t have done this. Fuck, what if he hates_ me _after this?_ She could feel her lower lip tremble as she managed a smile back at him.

“Sure,” he agreed, and she couldn’t decipher his tone. Reluctant? Hesitant? Just… tired? And then they were coming together at the center of the lighting backdrop, stopping just before their feet touched.

Pidge knew she was holding his eyes for longer than she should have been; they sparkled in the light, the hundreds of fairy lights like a tiny galaxy against the dark of his pupils. She felt like she was searching for something—for confirmation, for reassurance, for the source of what was bothering him. It wasn’t there.

Lance tilted his head, a silent question, the corners of his eyes tightening in an almost-smile. “You good, Pidge?”

 _How could I be when you’re not?_ she thought—before her brain backpedaled, willing the easy reply off of her lips. “Yeah,” she breathed instead, returning his almost-smile with what she hoped looked like a real one.

A camera shutter startled them apart. “Oh, what an adorable photo,” Allura cried, Hunk’s phone screen casting a cool glow on her face. “Wow. You two look like you’ve been in love for ages.”

The moment was well and truly shattered as something like pain flashed across Lance’s face—he looked away quickly, taking a step backwards and nearly losing his footing on a slick portion of the wooden deck. “I—”

“Whoa, you good buddy?” Hunk asked, stepping over towards them.

“I need to go,” Lance bit out, looking almost panicked. “Just—inside, for—for a second. I’ll—”

He seemed to almost spin on his heel in his haste to start off towards the doors, head down, steps unnaturally jilted. 

Pidge’s feet were frozen to the ground, even as Hunk took another tentative step forward. “I’ll, uh—I’ll go make sure he’s okay,” he said. “I’m sure it’s just, like—”

“Go,” Shiro interrupted, firmly. Hunk closed his mouth and nodded before he, too, turned to head for the house.

Pidge blinked and blinked, but it felt like no use. Her mind buzzed an uncomfortable empty, arms limp and useless at her sides.

She’d really fucked this up.

Really, well, and truly.

Pidge didn’t even know when Hunk had disappeared from view, her vision blurring with hot tears before he’d even made it back into the house. She’d spent her whole life being told she was so smart; why did she always end up being so _stupid_?

A gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder. “Katie… do you want to tell us what’s really going on?”

Pidge waged all-out warfare on the tears that tightened her throat as she turned to face Allura, who was looking at her with genuine concern. A quick glance to her right showed the rest of Lance’s team wearing similar expressions. 

She couldn’t do this—couldn’t even piece together what had just gone so horribly wrong—but she couldn’t leave this disaster of a clean-up job to Lance.

“I don’t know how much Lance has told you guys about me,” she managed, cheeks mercifully dry, “but what matters right now… is that I am probably the worst friend in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy! All of the angst, and none of the payoff! (Don't worry; it's coming soon.)
> 
> Also I'm sorry, I lied - final chapter might be up just a little after Christmas :') Alas! That's what I get for allowing my brain to chase after a couple of other non-holiday-themed projects. If you keep an eye on my profile (or on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/itskiliann) & [tumblr](https://itskiliann.tumblr.com/)), you might reap the benefits of those in a few weeks' time. ;)


	4. so we could call it even

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll try to have this up by Christmas," I said. _I'll meet a self-imposed deadline for once in my life,_ I said. (Alas. We're here. Apologies to anyone who hates cliffhangers and/or unresolved Langst.)
> 
> Additionally, if you haven't seen Die Hard, I'm retracting my statement that you don't need to know anything about it because there's a couple of lines that won't make any sense otherwise - all you need to know is that the main character's wife, Holly McClane (& yes, it's spelled differently than Lance's 'McClain'), has been going by her maiden name 'Gennero' when the movie starts, but by the end she introduces herself to someone as Holly McClane again (because apparently taking out a bunch of European terrorists is enough to make you reconsider the inner struggles of your marriage.) That is all. :')

Pidge couldn’t look at Allura as she explained why she was here—an uninvited guest, attending under a false pretense. “Lance lied to get me through the door,” she said. “Because—well, I guess you all saw my ring. I’m… really into technology. I just wanted to look around the Estate, and—Lance is a great friend. Who got me in, so I could see it.”

When no one said anything, she took a deep breath and began to recount the conversation she’d overheard between Lance and Lotor, purposefully avoiding her earlier encounter with the latter—and skirting around what it was that Lotor had actually used to taunt Lance—simply leaving it at, “He said some stuff that… I know really bothered Lance,” and pushing forward.

She felt their eyes hot on her skin but stared resolutely at the floor as she finished. “By the time that conversation was almost over, I was just going to… well, I hadn’t meant to stick around. But then everyone else showed up, and I had to keep pretending—we had to keep pretending—and _clearly_ it was just… he hated every second of it.” She hated the way her voice broke. “So now we’re here. I think.” Pidge finished with a minuscule shrug, blinking rapidly.

Shiro was the first to break the tension, clearing his throat and shuffling a half-step closer to her. She looked up and found him fighting a—a smile? “Well,” he said, “that… sounds a lot more like our Lance than a surprise fiancée.”

A feeble snicker escaped her before she could help herself. “Yeah,” she admitted softly. It really did.

“Now—you _are_ ‘Pidge’, correct? Lance didn’t make that bit up?” Coran asked.

“No,” she answered. “I mean—yes, I’m Pidge. Katie. Same difference.”

Allura’s hand, still on her shoulder, moved in a gentle rubbing motion, and the woman moved forward as she did so to face Pidge instead of standing at her side. “Well, Pidge—let me be the first to say that a friend of Lance’s is a friend of ours. You’re perfectly welcome to stay, fiancée or not.” She dropped her hand and her gaze. “I… apologize for Lotor. He can be… difficult, when something’s bothering him.”

Pidge winced at the implication—that Allura knew _why_ Lance bothered Lotor—but nodded. “I—thank you. I’m so sorry for intruding.”

“Hey,” Shiro cut in, “don’t worry about it. Lance’s antics are what make this job what it is.” He smiled at her. “And it sounds like you’ve got some good stories yourself.”

Pidge frowned for a second before she remembered what he was talking about—apparently Lance had brought up at least one of her more infamous pranks in the office before. “Yeah, well—going to school with Lance and Hunk gives you a good reason to up your prank game,” she said, quirking a weak half-smile at them all.

“Ah, you did attend school with them, then?” Coran asked. Pidge glanced at the door they’d disappeared through, feeling her stomach twist into an even tighter knot, but she nodded.

“Yep. Didn’t make that part up, either. Hunk and Lance were roommates, and I was in a bunch of engineering classes with Hunk, and we just… we’ve been friends ever since. It’s a little weird not to be working with them anymore, but we still manage to get into trouble.” She laughed softly. “Like tonight, I guess.”

Keith cleared his throat, and everyone’s eyes snapped to him. “You know,” he said, “I wasn’t joking when I said Lance mentioned how good you were with computers a lot. I doubt you’d have trouble re-joining him at Altech if you applied.”

_If I applied,_ Pidge thought ruefully. Her eyes darted to Allura, who only smiled at her. “None of us are in HR, but I’m certain a good word or two would be put in for you.”

Pidge felt her face heat again. “I—thank you, that’s—very generous of you,” she said.

Her eyes drifted back to the door before she could stop herself.

“You should—” Shiro cleared his throat. “You should go after him.”

Pidge’s face jerked towards him. “Wh—”

She was the last person on Earth that Lance would want to see right now. She’d just humiliated him in front of his co-workers; she’d leaned into his side, threaded her fingers through his, forced him into this scenario without his consent, until he had _literally fled_. Pidge only realized she’d already begun compartmentalizing everything as the wall broke again, the shame rushing over her in a fresh wave of ice, stiff, _hot._

“He doesn’t want to see me.”

Shiro raised a single eyebrow, which Pidge found entirely too audacious coming from a virtual stranger. “He really cares about you.”

Pidge blinked, opened and closed her mouth, swallowed. Lance cared about her, sure; but it was a cruel reminder. “—we’re friends,” she croaked. “Of course he does. Doesn’t mean I should go make things worse.”

Dammit, if she thought she could go in after him, she’d be gone from this conversation in a heartbeat. She’d be in there, apologizing, making sure he was okay, promising never to make things weird for him ever again—but that was the last thing he needed right now. Or maybe it was the last thing _she_ needed. She wasn’t sure anymore.

Pidge worried her lip at the conflicting tides of white-hot guilt and dread roiling in her gut; Shiro smiled at her again, but it was… sympathetic. Sadder.

“You really care about _him_.”

The guilt and dread shifted into a simmering anger before she could clamp down on it, a symptom of the temper she’d tried and failed to hold back for most of her life—and a decent portion of that evening. She lifted her chin. “ _You_ really know a lot _about_ me, despite having spoken to me a grand total of about one conversation.”

Shiro opened his mouth, his shoulders coming up apologetically towards his ears—but before he could reply, Keith stepped forward, a hand at Shiro’s chest. “Hey,” he interjected, “Pidge—Katie—don’t take this the wrong way, but Lance, uh… I mean, he says a lot more about you than just, uh, your computer skills. We _don’t_ know you, but… we know you guys are important to each other.”

Pidge still felt the hair on the back of her neck bristling, but she found she was at a loss for words. How many double-meanings could she glean from that? _How many would she need to forcibly push out of her mind later tonight when she was trying not to cry into her pillow?_

“Now, I’m no Lance expert,” Coran cut in, “but Lance doesn’t usually keep things bottled up. He’s what my grandfather liked to call an ‘open book’. I’m sure he’d tell you what was bothering him if you asked.”

That was… mostly right. Where Pidge was a compartmentalizer, Lance was an open book who felt everything—but he knew how to hide the pages he didn’t want others to see, something she’d had to learn over a period of _years_. His co-workers knew him pretty well, she’d give them that much, but… they couldn’t know the kinds of things he hid. And if he’d been trying—and failing—to hide from them—

—it was worse than any of them knew. She couldn’t fix that.

She couldn’t just waltz in and ask him to bare all; and even if he would, she wasn’t sure she could take it if it was even partially about Allura again. That had been hard enough when her crush had been small and easily dismissed. And… Hunk would take care of it, she thought. Hunk could talk Lance through just about anything. He’d know what to say. He’d… probably need to do the same for her, in the next day or two.

And there—oh.

There he was, coming back through the sliding doors, shoulders heavy even from a distance. No Lance trailing behind him.

“Hunk!” she cried, and everyone turned to follow her gaze. Hunk looked as young as he really was with his hands shoved into the pockets of his slacks, walking as briskly toward them as possible between the smattering of party guests milling on the deck. His brow was furrowed, gaze not quite focused on them, attention clearly elsewhere.

“Hey guys,” he said once he’d made it over to them. Then he locked eyes with her. “Pidge.”

Pidge felt her stomach drop even lower. “Is he okay?” she whispered.

An infinitesimal shake of his head. “He’s in the spare room—one at the very back—off the front hallway,” he said quietly. “You… you should go find him.”

“Are you sure?” Pidge felt the thin strings of her resolve begin to snap. She _knew_ Lance wouldn’t want to see her—at least, she was nearly certain—but… Hunk knew Lance, too; the only person she’d grant the honor of knowing him better than _she_ did. And if he thought Lance wanted to see her…

“Yeah.” Hunk nodded stiffly. “It’s… not something I’m gonna be able to help him with.”

_And I can?_

_That_ shot icy worry through her veins, a chilled electric current chasing goosebumps up her arms and a shudder down her spine. Pidge hadn’t realized she’d been worrying the inside of her cheek until she tasted the metallic tang on her tongue; she swallowed thickly and glanced at the others.

“Go,” Allura said, so gently Pidge had to strain to hear her. “It sounds like he needs you.”

_Needs you._

Her last string snapped, and Pidge all but bolted for the doors.

* * *

When she found him at the end of the front hallway, Lance was alone, staring blankly at a closet door from where he sat on the edge of a four-poster, the only light source a small lamp on the bedside table. He looked small and out of place, a navy three-piece hunched over in a sea of faded wallpaper and burgundy bedspread. When he looked up, Pidge saw his eyes were red-rimmed, and her heart sank impossibly lower.

“I really fucked that up, huh.”

It was a statement, not a question, in a voice too flat to be Lance’s.

It took everything in her not to launch herself at him in a hug; in any other situation, it would have been her natural response, but now… she wasn’t sure he’d even want that. “Are you alright?”

It was a stupid reply, a stupid rhetorical question—but to her horror, Lance’s eyes filled with fresh tears, and he buried his head in his arms, bent nearly double, shoulders beginning to shake softly.

This was… this was as bad as the early days of Allura and Lotor’s relationship. Possibly worse. A thousand more reasons for what was hurting him—hurting him _like this_ —skittered across her mind, but she shoved them away in favor of… of doing _something_. Pidge felt her lip tremble as she padded over to where he sat, hopping up to reach the raised mattress and sit beside him. Lance’s shaking only intensified, but he remained silent. Hesitantly, Pidge reached out to place her hand in the center of his back.

“Hey,” she said softly, with more strength in her voice than she felt. “Lance, talk to me. Is this… is this about Allura?”

She thought she’d hit the nail on the head when he made a pained choking noise, but then he was shaking his head. “No, dammit,” he bit out. He pushed himself up so that his forearms rested on his knees, turning his head to look at her; it was in that moment, staring into his glassy, bloodshot eyes, that Pidge felt her heart break. “Fuck, Pidge— _why are you still here?_ ”

She jerked her hand from his back quickly, eyes widening. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry—do you want me to go? I can—I can leave you alone. I just thought—” _I just thought you’d told me, once, that you hated crying alone._

His eyes searched hers for something she didn’t know. “Don’t you _want_ to go?”

_What?_

Her mouth opened and closed, brows furrowing. “Wh—Lance, why would I? I’ve already been a _shit_ friend to you tonight, so I’m going to make sure you’re alright and that I didn’t just botch everything… or I can leave if you don’t want to see me.” She couldn’t will her lip to stop trembling, so she dropped her gaze, squeezing her eyes desperately shut.

“ _You’re_ a shit friend? Why—? I just made you uncomfortable in front of a bunch of strangers because I was goddamn selfish, Pidge! You’re not the shitty friend here!”

She knew he wasn’t mad at her, but the anger in his voice sent her over the edge; tears streamed down her cheeks as she blinked at him furiously. “And I wasn’t doing the same thing? Lance, I made you so uncomfortable you all but _fled the room_ —that sounds pretty shitty and selfish to me!”

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t how any of this—this night, this last-second charade, this conversation—was supposed to go. Lance was staring at her, a muscle ticking in his jaw, and she couldn’t fucking take it anymore—she let herself stare back, her face an open book of tears and terror and probably everything she’d been keeping from him since Allura. She had nothing to lose.

“What made it selfish?”

The question didn’t process at first. Pidge’s breath caught in her throat. “What?” she choked.

Lance seemed, somehow, to gain some semblance of composure. He asked again, coolly, “What made what you were doing selfish, Katie?”

_Oh._

She nearly forgot to answer as her brain promptly _reeled_ at the sound of her given name on his lips, here, where he wasn’t trying to pretend any longer—but after a moment, she found her voice. “I guess—well, it started because Hunk and I overheard Lotor being an absolute _dick_. And then—something just snapped, and the next thing I knew, I was charging in there as your fiancée to get you out of it,” she rushed, “so that wasn’t… that wasn’t entirely selfish.” She exhaled sharply. “But after that, I mean, we sort of didn’t have a choice but to pretend, but I—I didn’t _have_ to hold your hand, or have an arm a-around your waist, but I—” _I wanted to. Fuck, I wanted to._

Lance made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and she froze. “Katie, are you telling me you _meant_ to pretend we were engaged?” She nodded mutely. “Holy _shit_ ,” he wheezed through a laugh, “I thought—when I introduced you as… _that_ , I thought that I’d made a huge mistake, misinterpreted what you were doing, and that you _hated_ it and that you were gonna hate me and…”

Pidge sniffed softly, and he stopped. “Pidge. Pidge, I’m sorry, I should have—I should have asked, are you okay? _Did_ you hate it…?”

She wiped angrily at her eyes, staring resolutely at the floor as she cursed. “Damn it, Lance, no. No, I didn’t.”

He was silent for a moment.

“Me either,” he said, softly.

_Wh—_

“What do you mean?” she rasped. “Lance, you looked like you wanted to be literally anywhere else!”  
Instead of nodding, or looking chastised, or getting angry, Lance just… laughed, softly. “That’s not because I hated being your fiancé,” he said.

Pidge was frozen again, her voice barely working as she asked, “Then why?”

“Because,” he said, taking a breath, “Katie Holt, I have been in love with you for longer than I think I ever realized, and I hated every second of tonight because I knew it wasn’t _real_.”

Oh.

_Oh._

Pidge knew she was staring, knew she needed to say something, anything, but she was _truly_ frozen now. She didn’t even realize she’d begun crying in earnest until Lance reached up to swipe away a stream of tears with his thumb, forehead creasing. “Is… is that okay?”

And oh, it was _more_ than okay, but Pidge didn’t trust her voice, didn’t trust her face not to absolutely crumple if she tried to say anything back; instead, she leaned into his soft touch on her cheek and nodded faintly. Her eyes darted to his lips, and she dragged them back up to meet his eyes, a weak smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Lance’s face changed, from concerned to… disbelieving. Like he couldn’t quite accept what his eyes were telling him. Like he was guarding himself from something. Suddenly, Pidge knew she _had_ to make him stop looking at her like that.

She was leaning forward before she realized what she was doing, freezing just inches away from his face—and then it was his turn to glance briefly downward, meet her eyes again. Pidge wasn’t sure who had closed the distance in the end.

Lance responded to her immediately, and Pidge determined in the split second of rational thought she had left that she was going to kiss him so thoroughly that he never looked at her like that _ever again_. He—and probably she—tasted like dried tear tracks, salty and somewhat unpleasant, but she kissed him through it until the only taste left in her mouth was something new and entirely _Lance_.

Pidge brought a hand up to card through his hair even as he slid his hand from her cheek to rest tenderly under her jawbone, holding her with just his thumb and forefinger as though she might break if he wasn’t careful. She sighed softly into his mouth and felt the corners of his lips twitch upwards in response.

Though Lance was kissing her back, he kissed hesitantly, only returning what she initiated; that wouldn’t do. Pidge let her tongue flicker lightly over the bottom corner of his lower lip—and that seemed to be enough. Lance opened to her, but before she could venture further, he was plundering her mouth, leaving her with nothing to do but simply _be kissed_. He kissed her like a man starving, both hands coming up to cradle her face, to pull her closer to him. She swung a leg over his lap without thinking, pulling herself by his shoulders so that she straddled him—he made a soft noise into her mouth, something so fragile and quiet that it sent a bolt of desire straight to just below her navel.

Pidge pulled back slowly, letting out a sigh that was breathier than she’d intended, and they panted softly as they caught their breath. She couldn’t drop her gaze from his, and it should have been awkward, sitting here like this on his lap as they stared at one another, but it—it felt safe. A little bit unreal. Consequence-free.

“Lance McClain,” she said—finding her voice to be working now, albeit half an octave lower—”I’ve been in love with you for a year now, and tonight was the _worst fucking thing that has ever happened to me_. Never make me do that again.”

Lance’s voice broke on a laugh in a way she thought was _unfairly_ endearing. “ _Never_.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Would you do it again if—if we did it for real?”

Pidge blanched. “Wh—be _engaged_?”

“No!” Lance yelped. “I mean—I just mean, like… dating. Being my date. To the party. Or, well, maybe not this one, but a just-dating-is-allowed party. Because—”

Pidge cut his stilted rambling off with a delighted bark of laughter. “—Lance, I explained everything to Allura. She does _not_ care that I’m here. I can… I can be your date to this party, if you… if you want.”

Lance’s mouth snapped shut, and he had the good sense to look a little embarrassed—before his eyes trailed just a slight ways downward. “Well… not looking like this, you can’t.”

Her eyes traced the flush in his cheeks, the outline of his swollen lips, and felt her face heat at the thought that she might look anywhere close to _that_ —thoroughly-kissed and giddy and disheveled. She shifted in his lap and looked up at him shyly through her eyelashes. “That’s a shame,” she said. “I just found out the man I’m in love with, God-only-knows why, loves me back. And now he doesn’t want to do anything about it.”

“Katie,” he breathed, only the very ghost of a smile on his lips, “I love you. And there is so much I want to do about it.”

This time when he leaned in, the tears she felt welling behind her eyelids were from an impossible happiness; this kiss was slow, soft, not nearly as desperate but just as passionate. Lance kissed her like she was something to be treasured. She could only hope she was returning it in equal manner. Pidge’s arms wound around his neck as he began to kiss gently down her jawline, the obscene sound of her hitched breathing filling the room in a way that set her whole face and chest on fire—

—they barely heard the giggling from behind the door before it burst open, a couple stumbling into the dim room and flicking on the brighter ceiling light haphazardly.

Pidge leapt off of Lance’s lap—forgetting the height of the bedframe and finding herself flailing painfully to the floor on her back with an undignified yelp.

“—Oops!” cried one member of the couple, a girl with a high red ponytail. “We’ll just—find another room!” They fled the room, leaving more giggling in their wake.

Pidge lifted herself onto her forearms and looked up at Lance, who looked as flushed as she felt, staring resolutely at a spot on the floor just next to her.

“Welp,” he said, thinning his lips into a straight line and hunching over. Pidge giggled a little at his obvious discomfort. Suddenly, she was reminded of a similar—though far less promiscuous—scenario from one of the opening scenes of Lance’s favorite Christmas movie.

“Well—you’ve got a company party to get back to, don’t you, Generro?”

Lance frowned at her for a second before recognition flashed behind his eyes. He slid off the edge of the mattress and held out a hand to help her up, a ridiculous coy smile on his face. “Oh, that’s Holly _McClane_ to you, John.”

She took his hand and found herself being pulled up into him, a hand landing on his chest as she looked up—straight-faced—at his goofy grin. “I hope you know that there’s absolutely nothing romantic about this right now.”

He cocked his head, still grinning, and bent to press a quick kiss to her lips. “How about now?”

She pursed her lips, pretending to ponder even as the butterflies in her stomach practically grovelled to differ. “Hm… I think I’m gonna need a little more convincing.” Her poker face broke, and she grinned up at him. When he took just a second too long to start leaning down, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare whisper ‘ _yippee-ki-yay_ ’ just before you kiss me, you absolute dumbass.”

Lance pouted, and she smacked him lightly across the chest—before standing on her tip-toes to give him a kiss of her own, made sloppy by the smiles they couldn’t quite hold back.

* * *

A light rapping on the doorframe to her office brought Pidge back to the real world, full of color but devoid of the Singleton patterns she’d been immersed in all morning. Lance stood in the door, coffee cup in hand—she looked between it and the empty one on her desk.

“A second coffee?” she asked, flashing him a bemused smile before turning her attention briefly back to her monitor, closing out of a handful of tabs.

He took a step inside, snickering. “What makes you think I didn’t just get my own?”

She opened her mouth, then promptly shut it again. “Because,” she mumbled, “I’m the only one who drinks coffee past noon.” Pidge certainly wasn’t the only human with a heightened tolerance for caffeine, but Lance never ceased to tease her for it.

He laughed and set the cup down next to her, but he didn’t take his hand off of it. “Keith drinks coffee past noon,” he said. “What makes you think it’s not for _him_?”

“Well,” she chirped, far more brightly, “because you love _me_ , McClain.”

Pidge could see his too-warm-for-this-professional-environment smile even from the corner of her vision. “That I do, Katie,” he said. “That I do.”

She shut her laptop with a satisfying _click_ and reached to pull the coffee from his grasp, trying and failing to keep the corners of her lips from curling up. “Why a second coffee? Not that I’m complaining.”

“I figured you’d like it more than some flowers,” he said, shrugging.

“Flowers…?”

Lance barked a laugh. “Pidge, don’t tell me you didn’t remember.”

Her eyes flew to the Altech-branded desk calendar she kept to the left of her keyboard, scanning for any important appointments—until her eyes fell on the date. _February 14_. “Oh,” was all she said. _Shit._ Pidge had never celebrated Valentine’s Day with anyone else, and it had never stuck out on her radar of Important Events—she still felt like kicking herself for forgetting, though.

Lance merely came around behind her chair to pull her jacket from where it hung over the back. “Well then,” he said, smiling. “Guess I’d better make today so romantic you never forget another Valentine’s Day again, huh?”

He held up her coat, and she let him help her into it, no longer trying to hide the small grin on her face. Since taking a Senior Developer position at Altech a month ago, Pidge had been the less comfortable of the two of them with public displays of affection in the office—but on today of all days, she reasoned, a little chivalry certainly couldn’t hurt. “I guess you’d better,” she said, standing up from her chair with a sheepish duck of her head. “Lunch?”

“Lunch,” he confirmed with a bob of his head. “I didn’t have anything specific in mind—you feelin’ anything?”

Pidge shook her head—and grabbed his hand. He rewarded her with a soul-warming smile. “Not really,” she said honestly. “Do you know what the others are doing?”

The Lunch Group, very much a capitalized proper noun—and the name of their group chat—had taken to Pidge as soon as she’d joined the team, despite her rocky introduction. She loved the work she was doing, and she loved the people she got to do it with—a total one-eighty from her last job. Perhaps the only thing that _hadn’t_ changed from working at the Garrison was that lunch was still her favorite time of the day. While it wasn’t unheard of for someone to break off on their own for lunch once in a while, there was almost always something of a quorum carpooling together every day around noon.

“Hunk was talking about trying the new gourmet sandwich place on Lancaster,” Lance said. “Which sounded good to me, but—ah, since it’s Valentine’s Day, probably, I think Lotor’s coming along with Allura.”

Pidge couldn’t read whether the concern in Lance’s eyes was directed at her or at himself. Lotor had… mellowed, she would grant him, since she’d started work at Altech, even if he still wasn’t pleasant company. She hadn’t told Lance, but her working theory was simply that, as poorly as he’d handled it, he had simply felt threatened by Lance; now that Lance was spoken for, Lotor was only obnoxiously prickly rather than explicitly rude. Neither she nor Lance would ever be his biggest fan, but Pidge could finally have a conversation with him without any passive-aggression bleeding through—so that was something.

“I’m certain I’d survive,” she said carefully, “but if you wanted to do something with, like—just us, then I’d definitely—”

“Oh,” he said, looking a little relieved, “yeah, no, if you’re okay with it then we should definitely go with them. You—you don’t have any plans tonight, though, right?”

She shook her head. “Nope. You want to come over for some wildly romantic Taco Bell leftovers?”

“Well,” he laughed, “I mean, _yeah, always_ —but uh, I made us reservations at a place downtown, actually. Which I probably should have checked with you about first, but I thought—”

“Lance,” she cut him off, beaming, “that sounds amazing.” Then, banking on the fact that they were still in her office and very few people ever walked past it—she stood on her toes to plant a soft kiss to his cheek.

“Good,” he said, eyes sparkling warm. “Good.”

They were the first ones down to the ground floor lobby, so they moved to loiter next to the elevators until the others made it down; there were too many of them to do a single carpool, but everyone still liked to head out at the same time. The silence between her and Lance was a contented one, their hands still loosely tangled together as they waited—but Pidge worried her lip between her teeth, still preoccupied.

“I’m sorry about forgetting the day,” she said quietly. “I know it’s not an anniversary or anything but—I do love you, and I don’t want you to… doubt that.”

Lance stopped, then moved to grab her other hand, wrapping his fingers snugly around where she still held her coffee. When she looked up, he was smiling.

“Katie,” he said, laughing almost breathlessly, “if I was gonna doubt whether you loved me every time something tiny slipped your mind…” At her bemused look, he rubbed at the back of his neck. “—you know what, I’m not gonna finish that sentence.” A light pink dusted his cheeks, even as he grinned. “I just mean—it really doesn’t matter. I promise. I’ll love you three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, not just this one.”

Her stomach did _backflips_ , like it was the first time he’d said so back in December and not the thousandth. “Damnit, Lance,” she stammered with a watery smile. “Don’t make me cry on Valentine’s Day. That’s the opposite of romantic.”

“Is it?” he asked, eyes going as soft as her knees felt. “We should probably fix that, then.”

And they did, gladly, leaning in to share a kiss that quickly bloomed into two, three, before Lance was doing something with his tongue she wasn’t sure belonged in _any_ setting that wasn’t lit with candles, her free hand coming up to the highest button of his dress shirt—to push him away, gently, because any second now someone was going to round the corner—

“ _Well,_ happy _Valentine’s_ Day, guys!” came Hunk’s low chuckle from where the elevator door stood, open, with… _all_ of their colleagues behind him.

Pidge’s face and chest felt positively on fire, her feet rooted to the spot. She felt Lance shift a few inches away and rest a firm hand on her shoulder—something comforting and far less intimate. She let out the breath she’d been holding and gave the rest of her co-workers a shaky smile as they finished spilling out of the elevator.

“Don’t let us interrupt anything,” Shiro said with an infuriatingly smug grin. Allura giggled and grabbed Lotor’s arm; he looked thoroughly uncomfortable, and Pidge found she… suddenly didn’t care quite as much.

“Sorry,” she managed, pursing her lips. “ _Some_ one thought he needed to make today romantic.”

Keith only rolled his eyes, though she was fairly certain she caught a flash of amusement with it. “Just get a room first,” he muttered.

The weight of Lance’s hand on her shoulder shifted, and Pidge looked up at him to find a dangerous smirk on his face, leveled at Keith. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “The last time Pidge and I ‘got a room,’ we went from engaged to dating—if we did that again, I’m pretty sure the only box left to check is marriage.”

Pidge choked on a laugh even as everyone else gave good-natured chuckles—but she watched Lance’s smile slip as he looked down at her, the look on his face reminding her of the same expression he’d worn at the Christmas party almost two months ago. Was he worried he’d overstepped?

She slid his hand off of her shoulder with her own and laced their fingers together, giving him the fondest smile she could muster. “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she teased.

Lance smirked, confidence returning in full force. “Only for all these other guys who won’t ever have a chance with you again.”

She heaved an exaggerated sigh and tugged at their joined hands, moving to follow the others towards the exit. “Right. I’m sure they’ll be devastated.”

Pidge was going to _marry_ Lance McClain. Maybe just… maybe just more than a few rooms alone later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOW I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND. HO! HO! HO!
> 
> _Wow!_ I was not expecting this to hit 15k, but here we are! Please enjoy my first contribution to the fandom; I'm more than a little insecure about the fluff (and the melodrama...) but I know I'm trash for this kind of thing so I certainly hope others are, too. Here's to watering our Plance. :') A very Merry and belated Christmas, everyone. <3
> 
> _(To any fellow programmers: I hope you laughed like I did at Pidge being “immersed in” Singleton patterns lmao; I couldn’t remember the names of any other design patterns for a second and then decided to leave it in for the laughs.)_
> 
> P.S. You can find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/itskiliann) and [tumblr](https://www.itskiliann.tumblr.com)!


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